Sunday, June 30, 2013

In a sign that candidates are not exactly beating down the
doors, the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions has hired a “headhunter” to
find someone to fill John August’s vacant desk as the Coalition's Executive Director.

Here’s an email sent by Ken Margolies, who describes himself as an "Executive Recruiter" at a firm called Margolies and Potterton:

From: Ken Margolies

Date: June 26, 2013, 8:08:44 AM EDT

To: Ken Margolies

Subject: Please help me find a new Exec Dir for the
Coalition of Kaiser Unions, based in Oakland CA,

Do you have any ideas of candidates for this?They are especially looking for someone with
experience uniting coalition partners and coordinated bargaining.

Ideal candidate: experienced principal officer or director with
success leading high level negotiations and coalitions, managing staff
and budgets, strategic planning, building good relationships with
management, patience, presence and confidence.

Well, it’s common knowledge that SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan and John August have already inked
a deal with Kaiser to slash the health benefits and eliminate the defined-benefit
pension plans for all 100,000 of the Coalition’s members during the next round
of bargaining in 2015.

As a result, these massive givebacks will become the crowning accomplishment of the next
Executive Director! Not exactly the sort of career-building material you’d want on your resume… unless you plan to work for Kaiser’s H.R. Department.

Furthermore, August’s replacement will have to handle many other
messes left behind by August, including multiple legal disputes connected to August's sexual harassment and bullying against multiple members of the Coalition's staff.

Lastly, a replacement will have to swallow August’s and Regan’s
brand of company unionism, which they try to peddle to workers as "21st Century unionism.” If candidates possess even a shred of integrity, they'll pass up the chance to run a “union” that’s simply an
appendage of Kaiser's corporate headquarters.

So… who can possibly fill this job? Here are Tasty's ideas.

George Halvorson

(1) George Halvorson. Halvorson will soon be retiring as the CEO of Kaiser Permanente. He won't have much to do except count all the money he'll be collecting from his nine pension plans. Of course, having Kaiser's ex-CEO as the head of Kaiser workers' union might be a bit unseemly to some. But that's basically been the reality ever since Dave Regan parachuted into California.

(2) Jeffrey Skilling. Let's face it. The Coalition needs a
candidate who has zero integrity and would have no hesitation cutting
backroom deals to screw the Coalition's 100,000 members. Corporate
America is filled with assholes like this. The only downside with
Jeffrey Skilling, the former CEO of the Enron Corporation, is he's still serving jail time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Littleton, CO for insider trading, securities fraud and conspiracy. Oh well.

(3) Goofy.It
was a stroke of luck that the Partnership Unions’ most recent shindig was at
Disneyland.

It gave Coalition officials a chance to interview promising candidates
like Goofy, who reportedly attended the interview wearing a cape and crown.

NUHW represents 2,500 clinicians who care for mental health
patients in dozens of Kaiser's clinics, hospitals and emergency rooms across
California. In 2011, NUHW filed this
complaint with state officials alleging that Kaiser systematically
understaffs its clinics and forces mental health patients to wait for weeks
to get care.

Kaiser's fat-cat executives, of course, denied the allegations. And SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan reacted to the complaint by cozying up even closer to its law-breaking corporate "partner."

Then, in March, the state issued a 23-page
report that blasted Kaiser for serious violations
of state law -- including forcing patients to wait weeks and weeks for
treatment. The state even found that Kaiser uses duplicate paper lists to hide patients' lengthy wait
times for appointments.

Finally, today, the state announced a
$4 million fine against Kaiser! The agency also filed a "Cease
and Desist Order" to force Kaiser to provide its patients with the care
they need, deserve and pay for.

Tasty's sources say NUHW's victory is a huge win for mental health
patients and healthcare workers in California... especially because Kaiser is the state’s
largest HMO with 7 million members.

Quite impressive what a real union can actually do, right?

Here's NUHW’s press
release about today's $4 million fine against Kaiser. More info and press coverage is posted on NUHW’s website here.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Last week, workers at a nursing home in Northern California requested
an NLRB election to join NUHW. Recently, workers discovered that their current union, SEIU-UHW, inked a secret
deal with their Boss to slash workers' wages, benefits and even their working
hours.

Here’s how one worker at San Rafael Healthcare and Wellness
Center described it:

SEIU lied to our faces
for months, telling us they weren’t bargaining in secret with our boss. But
they were. And five months later, we finally got a copy of the deal they
signed. With one secret deal, SEIU has destroyed all of the benefits and
standards that we’d slowly built up over 25 years of bargaining.

Sources tell Tasty that Myriam
Escamilla, the director of SEIU-UHW’s Nursing Home Division, is the
official who signed the backdoor deal... and then refused to give copies to workers and
refused to even disclose that she was bargaining with their Boss. Last year, Escamilla pocketed $138,756 in pay from SEIU-UHW, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Since Escamilla’s dirty deal, the nursing home company has
boosted workers’ share of health care premiums to more than $700 a month for family
coverage. And the company has slashed workers’ vacations, sick pay, holidays
and work hours. Sources tell Tasty that the company also cut the work hours of part-time
workers to 19 hours a week so they’re no longer eligible for any benefits
whatsoever.

Workers also report that SEIU-UHW reps are totally MIA when workers need help.

Last week, more than 90% of the workers signed a petition to
dump SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

In a second
legal victory for NUHW in as many weeks, a federal judge has ordered a
blockbuster lawsuit filed by NUHW against
Kaiser Permanente to proceed in
federal court.

The lawsuit alleges that Kaiser officials gave hundreds of
thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to SEIU-UHW as a way to fund SEIU-UHW’s two NLRB election campaigns against NUHW
for 45,000 Kaiser workers.

Under federal law (Section 302 of the Labor-Management
Relations Act), employers are strictly prohibited from giving money to unions
or union officials. The law, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1947, is designed
to prevent corporations from corrupting their unions by 'buying' union
officials through financial contributions and thereby securing their loyalty and subservience.

In this case, Kaiser aided its “labor-management partner” at SEIU-UHW by allowing
hundreds of SEIU-UHW’s shop stewards and supporters to take “leaves of absence”
or “lost time” from their regular jobs in order to campaign for SEIU-UHW during
the giant NLRB elections. And while these Purple supporters were campaigning for SEIU-UHW,
Kaiser paid for all of their benefits -- including their health insurance,
pension contributions, vacation pay, sick leave, etc.

In his eight-page decision (see below), the federal judge rips into
both Kaiser and SEIU-UHW.

No court has ever held
that employers can pay employees under a collective bargaining agreement to
campaign under the control of the incumbent union against a rival union. One
evil Congress wished to resist was a sweetheart cozy arrangement between the incumbent
union boss and the company, for such arrangements persist at the expense of the
workers. Yes, the employer likes doing business with such unions. But indirect
contributions as alleged here would violate the purpose of Section 302 “to
prevent bribery, extortion, shakedowns, and other corrupt practices.”

Corruption much, SEIU and Kaiser?

The judge notes that prior to SEIU’s trusteeship of SEIU-UHW
in 2009, Kaiser approved “no more than a handful” of lost-time requests for workers to do traditional contract enforcement and representation work.

But things quickly changed after SEIU’s DC officials
parachuted into California… and Dave
Regan began whispering promises into Kaiser’s ear. Here’s how an article in
the BNA’s “Daily Labor Report” describes it (see full article below):

Once the campaign
against NUHW was under way, the union alleged, Kaiser approved hundreds of such
requests, allowing SEIU-UHW to use the lost-time employees to campaign against
the SEIU affiliate's rival union.

According to the judge, this is strictly illegal.

Kaiser is here
allegedly violating the agreement by intentionally placing workers on lost-time
status to campaign against a rival union and dramatically increasing the number
of employees on compensated leave for such campaigning...

Under the new
pleading, therefore, Kaiser exceeded the scope of the original agreement and
simply gave money to SEIU-UHW. During the representation campaign, to repeat,
Kaiser released “hundreds of employees” on lost-time leave to campaign against
NUHW (Dkt. No. 60 at 11). The lost-timers did campaign against plaintiff NUHW
and Kaiser provided benefits and other things of value to the lost-timers while
they were released on lost-time leave (ibid.). This was tantamount to making
cash campaign contributions to SEIU-UHW to assist SEIU-UHW in fending off the
upstart rival NUHW.

Way to go, NUHW!

Here’s a little-known fact about the federal law
(Section 302) that's at issue here: violations can be prosecuted as criminal offenses! Of course, it’s unclear
if Kaiser’s executives -- such as CEO George Halvorson and COO Bernard Tyson -- could be criminally prosecuted in this case… But Tasty can dream, right?

The next step in the lawsuit is “discovery,” where NUHW will be
allowed to subpoena tons of information from Kaiser and will also get
the right to question Kaiser’s fat-cat executives while they're under oath!

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